RICHMOND, Va. — A century after it was mysteriously minted, a humble 5-cent coin with a storied
past is headed to auction, with bidding expected to top $2 million.

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is one of only five known to exist, but the coin’s back story adds
to its cachet: It was illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a
fake, forgotten in a closet for decades, then found to be the real deal.

The coin is expected to fetch $2.5 million or more when it goes on the auction block on April 25
in suburban Chicago.

“Basically, a coin with a story and a rarity will trump everything else,” said Douglas Mudd,
curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum of Colorado Springs, Colo., which has
held the coin for about 10 years.

The sellers, who will split the money equally, are four Virginia siblings.

The nickel was struck at the Philadelphia mint in late 1912, the final year of its issue, but
with 1913 cast on its face — the year that the beloved Buffalo Head nickel was introduced.

A mint worker named Samuel W. Brown is suspected of altering the die to add the bogus date, Mudd
said.

The coins’ existence wasn’t known until Brown offered them for sale in 1920 at the American
Numismatic Association Convention in Chicago. The five remained together until 1942.

A North Carolina collector, George O. Walton, bought one of the coins in the mid-1940s for a
reported $3,750. The coin was with him when he was killed in a car crash on March 9, 1962.

His sister, Melva Givens of Salem, Va., was given the 1913 Liberty nickel after experts declared
the coin a fake.

Rare-coin experts concluded in 2003 that it was the long-missing fifth coin. Each had a flaw
under the date.